Review: Zoe

Love is a kind of faith and, as with most faiths, difficult to quantify. There is no one definitive formula for it, nor is there one to guarantee long-lasting success. Now, what if someone told you there was a drug that could recreate the feeling of falling in love for the first time over and over again? What if you could be guaranteed that your heart would never get broken, that your partner would never leave you, and that you would be love and understood in ways you thought were beyond human capability?

In the world of Zoe, writer-director Drake Doremus' latest look at love in the technological age, love has been made into a kind of code, compatibility determined by algorithms, and feelings disregarded by the findings. The latter was the case for Cole (Ewan McGregor), whose marriage to Emma (Rashida Jones) never recovered after receiving a low score on the compatibility test that he created. The founder of the fastest-growing start-up in the human relationships market, his aim is to improve lives through better relationships. To that end, he's designed remarkably lifelike synthetic humans, the latest version of which is represented by Ash (Theo James), who is so evolved that he can read humans' emotions.

Perhaps that is an ability that Zoe (Léa Seydoux), Cole's most devoted employee, wishes were in her possession as she has long nursed feelings for Cole and wonders if they might be reciprocated. When they do eventually embark on a romance, it's fraught with complications, especially after one incident after which Zoe worries that Cole might not want the real her, but rather the her that he believes her to be.

As with his previous films, Equals and Newness, Zoe contains intriguing, though not necessarily new, observations on people's attempts to pin down the intrinsically ephemeral and volatile nature of love and how insecurities often erode one's belief in one's relationship. Yet, as with those films, these themes are bogged down with his increasingly enervating visual style. Scenes are seen through a gauze, one feels both in the present and out of it, and the camera searches as if recalling memories. Perhaps it would feel of the piece had he not done the same exact thing in his previous films. It's one thing to have a trademark aesthetic, it's a completely different thing to not adapt that aesthetic to the needs of the narrative.

Nevertheless, even with its shortcomings, Zoe is a more affecting effort than Doremus' recent work, and that may have to do with McGregor's emotionally layered and charismatic performance. He convinces as a man who comes to realise designed perfection is no match for the frailties that make us indubitably who we are.

Zoe

Directed by: Drake Doremus

Written by: Drake Doremus

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Léa Seydoux, Theo James, Rashida Jones, Christina Aguilera, Miranda Otto, Matthew Gray Gubler